According to a marginally informative article in the Lehigh Valley Morning Call, Douchebag Supreme Michael J Lisk raped the girl repeatedly for over a year, made her pregnant, then furtively buried the fetus after she induced her own abortion with a “lead pencil” (a process lasting three days).

The article is lousy with rape culture and fetus-fetish language, probably pulled verbatim from the police report. Patriarchy-favorable language like this is used all the time in police reports and the media, where it is instrumental in perpetuating the normalization of violent misogyny. In this case, the lingo portrays the kid as an active participant in deviant baby-killing.

— She “threw” the plastic bag containing the fetus she had “delivered.”
— The article describes a tender birth scene wherein the rapist exhorts the girl to “push hard.”
— The girl “gave birth” to a “stillborn baby.”
— As though they ought to be considered a couple, “the two” had a long-standing “sexual relationship” from the time she was 12.

Translation: clearly this little Lolita was no innocent virgin naif.

Small wonder, then, that the comments from imperfectly educated denizens of the Pennsylvania Poconos identify the girl as a dirty slut and call for her head. They’re all worked up about this baby-killer slut they read about in the paper.

I know when I was 13, I knew what sex was and that is caused pregnacy [sic] and that we have babies in hosipitals [sic]. If we dont [sic] know anything by that age, then the education system in america [sic] is a joke. she should be charged because she knows that wasnt [sic] right, bottom line.

Well, the author is herself irrefutable evidence of at least one of her points: the “education system in america” is a joke.

[T]hose of you who think a thirteen year old doesn’t know about sex, you need to enter the real world. I am also curious to know how she knew how to give herself an abortion.

Obviously a teenage girl who knows enough to abort a fetus with a Number 2 Ticonderoga, after “having sex” with a 30-year-old perv, deserves nothing but contempt from the self-righteous townsfolk.

Why isn’t the girl being charged with anything? […] She did the abortion herself and she put the baby in a bag and left it at the base of a tree, so she is just as guilty.

Teenage girls simply cannot usurp control of their own uteruses from 30-year-old serial rapists, goddammit, and expect to get away with it. Not on our watch! They are just as guilty as serial pedophile rapists who bury the evidence of their criminal activity to evade prosecution.

The angry mob wants that kid punished, goddammit, because if she’s old enough to “have sex,” she’s old enough to know that inducing an abortion with a pencil is “wrong.”

Well, except that she wasn’t “having sex,” she was raped, and it isn’t “wrong” — or even illegal — to have an abortion.

It is astonishing, the ease with which an angry mob can convene an ad hoc tribunal to ostracize the most damaged victims of their own diseased culture. They would deny the existence of rape culture, even if it means imprisoning a 13-year-old child for trying to exert some pitiful influence over her own body and her own future, even after she had been violated — by the serial rapist’s own admission, “countless times” — for over a year, only to endure a home-made abortion.

Yeah, a year of rapes and a three-day self-inflicted abortion. I bet that was a cakewalk.

Nobody on the planet is as despised as teenage girls.

Computer-generated list of quasi-related posts:

Father of the year Blamer Sofia was kind enough to depress the crap out of me this morning by...

TiG

Bushfire

I’ve been discussing this story on Feministe recently, and you wouldn’t beleive the people who are calling themselves feminists and trying to defend the right of the girl to choose to have sex with a 30 year old. Where do these people come from?

That poor kid. I hope her family is supportive and gets her the help she needs to recover from the abuse and build the strength to be better able to resist future abusive “relationships.” I hope her reproductive health remains intact so that her parts do what she wants them to do as she grows up. And I hope the bad man is both punished legally and ostracized socially for what he’s done to this child. Most of all, I hope that these things are not too much to hope for.

TiG

Anyway – What is wrong with people? That poor girl is going to need a lot of support. Her mother did the right thing by calling the police in, and the pedo has over 100 counts against him. So here’s my question: what is there to understand? Over 100 counts against him for rape, etc – and yet there are people still doing the victim-blaming schtick? I agree with you, Jill – you’d think if they wanted her punished it’s already time served!!

JT

Oh my god, my insides literally hurt for her. What torture.
Oh, yes, I’m sure that that poor girl and her monster-rapist were totes in a loving consensual relationship! Nothing says “I love you” like forcing your victim to jab her tender parts with a writing instrument in order to save your own sorry ass. I can’t believe she wasn’t heavily coached from him to “take care of the problem” on the down low and in any way necessary.

blondie

At least the man is being charged with many rapes of a child, even though the reporter cannot bear to use such mean, icky words about the “sexual relationship” between this child and the 30 yr. old. What kind of world is this girl living in when she is repeatedly raped from age 12 to 13, has to abort the product of those rapes with a lead pencil, it takes 3 days for the lead-induced abortion to culminate, and she is held up as a wrongdoer for her part? Sometimes, I really hate people.

I can hear the indignation echoing in the hollow chambers of these accusers skulls: “How dare she abort that poor, innocent life? Won’t somebody think of the children?” Excuse me while I vomit in my mouth.

Taqueau, but this is heartbreaking. Just when I think I have taken enough blows from the slings and arrows of outrageous patriarchy to be completely insensible, something like this happens and makes me want to scream and cry and claw out eyeballs with my bare fingers.

I’ve been discussing this story on Feministe recently, and you wouldn’t beleive the people who are calling themselves feminists and trying to defend the right of the girl to choose to have sex with a 30 year old. Where do these people come from?

Well, we’re entirely pro-kid here at Spinster HQ! While it is admirable to advocate for sexual autonomy for human girls, it is misguided to presume that this is possible, under the auspices of porn culture and domination culture and rape culture, without simultaneously facilitating abuser’s agendas. Given the enormous disparity in personal agency, the extent to which a 12-year-old girl can be said to have fully consented to sex with a 30-year-old man is negligible.

Theoretically, according to the Twistolution, all this hypervigilance disappears with the dissolution of patriarchy.

Lullabee

She should be charged because she should of known better then to even think about having sex with a 30 years old guy

But if 13-year-olds knew better than to have sex with 30-year-olds, it wouldn’t be a crime. Or should she be charged for aborting the fetus because she “should of known better” than to be raped? Because, as I understand it, “should of known better” doesn’t turn a child into an adult. When I was a child, my parents often told me I should have known better than to leave food out, frighten the cat, break things, etc., and yet I somehow remained a child.

I almost feel like the people saying those things don’t normally consider teenage girls miniature, subhuman adults; they’re just pretending she wasn’t really a victim so that they wouldn’t have to face up to the actual atrocity presented in the article. Somehow, their peace of mind is predicated on the idea that the little girl in the article wasn’t really raped.

Well, that’d give me peace of mind, too.

Jodie

That poor kid, my heart broke when I read about what had happened. In a kind world, people would have been up in arms about the 30-year-old rapist, and in addition, would be calling for the end of parental notification for abortion.

RKMK

That poor kid, my heart broke when I read about what had happened. In a kind world, people would have been up in arms about the 30-year-old rapist, and in addition, would be calling for the end of parental notification for abortion.

O, how I dream of the day.

hero

Is there anything anyone can do for her–any kind of activist effort to show this crap for what it is and help this little kid with the trauma of what she’s been through? And, barring that, any way to catch, slowly castrate and disembowel the guy? Say, over three days? While shaming him for being a slut?

joy

This is one of those triggering things that I keep coming back to like a train wreck or the grave of someone I didn’t like.

On one hand, it reaffirms how disgusting and horrible most human beings are.

On the other, it has crystallized for me the fact that had been hiding in front of me and I just couldn’t put a name on: sex-pozzers, like their godbaggy counterparts, want to erase the reality of rape.

Just like those who say “Punish the interloper (teen girl, prostituted woman, etc)!”, those who turn blame into an expression of pretend power, eg, “It (‘sex’ with a rapist, prostitution, stripping, etc) is her RIGHT!”, handily gloss over the fact that, dude — rape. RAPE.
And that also handily ignores the men in the situations — the men who buy other human beings for their personal use, and the men whose sexualities are so distorted that they want to “have sex with” (ie, rape) a twelve-year-old.

Funny enough, it is the sex-positive crowd that claims RADICAL FEMINISTS are more like evangelical godbaggers. Seems the opposite, to me.

The reason these people think that these rapes are a sexual relationship is that to them, all sex is rape. If you point out this logical segue to them, their brains implode in the fury of denial required to function in our horrific patriarchy.

Ashley

Yeah, I agree that he is painted as a loving figure. As if he cared so deeply for the fetus that he had to climb the tree and give it a proper burial. Dude, this girl is too young to realize that a tree is not a good hiding place, but she’s old enough to be held responsible for her own rape?

I really do need to go back to school, because that makes no fucking sense.

allhellsloose

This young woman’s continued rape and subsequent abortion truama at the hands of her paedophile rapist is shocking and disturbing. I hope she receives all the help she now so obviously needs.

Those comments should never have been published as it legitimised the inherent sentiments. They too make me sick to my stomach. To hell with moral imperatives regarding censorship. There comes a point when the delete button must be pressed.

Triste

Ah, the sexual autonomy of kids. This is one of my favorite subjects, because I happen to be one of those girls who did indeed first have sex at age 13 – with another girl, also 13. No dudes watching, no dudes influencing, no dudes involved at all. Nothing but me, Tiffany, a spot under the stairs of my middle school and the knowledge we had acquired from our vast storages of written erotica/fanfic. Despite this experience (and indeed because of this experience), I feel that I have grown up to be a perfectly healthy human being with no sexual dysfunction.

The issue at hand is never that 13 year old girls are “not ready” for the enormity of sex. That’s garbage, first of all because 13 year old girls have functioning brains (and some of them are quite bright) and because sex is just not that fucking complicated. The issue is, as Twisty has noted, consent: the amount of power any 30 year old man has over any 13 year old girl is enormous. Given that imbalance, how can anyone say that such a relationship can be consensual? If a master tells a slave, go pick cotton for a bit, and the slave says, yes sir, with the knowledge that the master could fuck his shit up if he refuses, can we say that the slave is now a voluntary servant? Fuck no! So how the fuck can we pretend that 13 year old girls are capable of consenting to sex with old men?

Princess Rot

Evidently this sick world doesn’t think much of children unless they are a fetus, and even then only if the presence of that fetus can be used to excuse abuse, exploitation and violence against women and girls.

Pansuit Sally

Ugh- sickening. In addition to blaming the victim, many of the commenters are also quick to call out her mother- anything to deflect blame from the proper target, I guess. I’ve also noticed this phenomenon in just about every newspaper article about a child beaten to death by his or her mother’s partner- John Q. Public is quick to point out that the mother is the real perpetrator, for not doing something to stop it or for having the nerve to get involved with such a bad person to begin with. As always, men are absolved of responsibility for their choices and actions and women are somehow to blame for what men choose to do.

Even though the general public is full of crap with regard to this case, I hope that for once the justice system will actually be on the victim’s side.

God it is such bullshit that they publish these stories. Not just because of the language, but because there is a chance that the victim could find the comments. I mean in the best case scenario she has some sort of support system of caring adults who believe her and don’t judge her, and finding a bunch of comments of that sort would counteract the positive reactions to some extent. In the worst case scenario it just worsens the guilt she no doubt feels. The level of support abuse victims get when they come forward has a correlation with the degree and type of mental illness that they experience later. Stuff like the duration and severity play a role as well, but that disbelieving blamey bullshit really fucks with people who have been abused, sometimes permanently.

If there is one thing that is missing from the American educational system it is this: victims of sexual abuse feel guilt for being abused almost universally. Extreme guilt. People seem to think that there is insufficient guilt when really, there is an abundance. I wish they would teach that in school, along with what empathy is and how it matters.

yttik

How sad. We have a girl here who is currently on trial for murder for placing a still born in the garbage. Naturally everybody wants her punished and the rapist is all but forgotten. So are the dozens of adults who let her down. This case has really screwed up my politics because some of those on the right have shown her more compassion and support then many of our allegedly fauxgressive dudes who keep harping about equality and how “if you want to play, you have to pay.”

tundaster

Well, I guess I’m the only one who doesn’t know: what is ‘involuntary deviate sexual intercourse’? It’s one of the charges against him. That he forced it on her? That I can believe. But… how are his actions involuntary? Am I just missing something?

@Belle, I would assume that the “involuntary” part refers to the fact that the girl did not consent, not that the rapist couldn’t help himself (although I would not be surprised if that is exactly what it meant). Since he is also charged with rape, it seems like maybe the involuntary deviant intercourse charge refers to something outside of penis-in-vagina rape, and is therefore apparently not rape.

Here in Memphis, a cop was charged with “coercive sex” for raping prostitutes. Apparently there is a legal difference between involuntary or coercive sex and rape. Many (perhaps most) people still seem to believe that if you aren’t beaten half to death and screaming bloody murder then you just haven’t been raped.

(a) Offense defined.–A person commits a felony of the first degree when he or she engages in deviate sexual intercourse with a complainant:
1. by forcible compulsion;
2. by threat of forcible compulsion that would prevent resistance by a person of reasonable resolution;
3. who is unconscious or where the person knows that the complainant is unaware that the sexual intercourse is occurring;
4. where the person has substantially impaired the complainant’s power to appraise or control his or her conduct by administering or employing, without the knowledge of the complainant, drugs, intoxicants or other means for the purpose of preventing resistance;
5. who suffers from a mental disability which renders him or her incapable of consent;
6. who is less than 13 years of age; or
7. who is less than 16 years of age and the person is four or more years older than the complainant and the complainant and person are not married to each other.

(b) Definition.–As used in this section, the term “forcible compulsion” includes, but is not limited to, compulsion resulting in another person’s death, whether the death occurred before, during or after the sexual intercourse.

tinfoil hattie

Naah, we’re despised, just like all women. But even if we were thin and young, we’d still be despised. Teenage girls are super-despised because of their burgeoning sexuality and their insistence on tempting poor innocent 30-year-olds to “have sex” with them.

Rachel

joy

Rachel, do you have room in your appointment book for my cousin, as well?

Unless this unfortunate girl has a truly exceptional family … well, as someone else pointed out, amount of support after trauma is key to surviving trauma, and that aposiopesis I just used suggests my level of belief that she will receive adequate support.

I was molested as a child, albeit a much younger child than this girl — and like most people who were molested as children, I received no support. (No one believed me, even when they walked in on the abuse. Surprise! And to this day, my mother ‘[does] not want to talk about it.’)

So I get to go with a bunch of other adult women who were molested as children to a specialty hospital in Queens for a few hours every day and, essentially, take a class in how not to implode and/or kill ourselves. Most of us take pills to ensure that we can survive in between ‘classes.’ It works with degrees of success that depend entirely upon each and every day.

Yes, this girl has a bright future ahead of her. Especially carrying around all that guilt (for not one but two socially condemned non-crimes — molestation and abortion, a two-for-one deal!) that the patriarchy assumes she does not have and wishes to give her more of.

Indeed, patriarchy is itself a gift that keeps on giving.

I shit upon the patriarchy.

kate

There’s a million of these girls walking around, shell-shocked, not all of them necessarily having had a horrendous abortion experience, but many with the same story of sexual coercion from a man when they were young.

I see them in the neighborhood I live in, I knew them when I grew up, I was one of them too.

Some live through it, most wonder aimlessly, sticking to the first sense of security they can find, many continue to succumb to male power for their entire lives, blaming themselves if that power fails them.

And they give birth to girls and like their mothers, turn a blind eye when a man exerts control, because the power lies with the man and damned the women who tries to stop him.

stickypaws

All the more reason to support women like RachelLloyd of GEMS. I know the girl in Pennsylvania was not commercially exploited/raped for money, but the attitude of entitled access to underaged girls, followed by righteous punishment is exactly the same.

yttik

No, we’re feared and hated, which actually is quite an improvement. They prey on the children because they are vulnerable and inexperienced and that’s how bullies operate. Try that crap with a middle aged woman and you’ll be fertilizing the rose buses.

“Some live through it, most wonder aimlessly, sticking to the first sense of security they can find, many continue to succumb to male power for their entire lives, blaming themselves if that power fails them.”

This is so painfully true.

That poor girl, I hope she doesn’t grow up hating herself and thinking it was her fault this happened, but thankfully to the miracle of the contemporary media and court system I bet it won’t happen. It fills one with so much rage and sadness to know another teenage girl has had her life shat on like I did.

On what could be considered a plus side – she might grow up to become an angry, wrathful, patriarchy blaming radical feminist. Well, we can only hope anyway.

delphyne

I’m not really following why people believe the story that she induced the abortion. If he’s happy to rape a 12 year old, it’s hardly going to be beyond him to stick a pencil into her to get rid of the evidence of his crimes. The story that he retrieved the foetus to redispose of it after his victim had already disposed of it doesn’t make sense. He was there when she delivered the foetus, controlling the delivery. Apparently a 13 year old was worldly wise enough to induce her own abortion. I don’t think so.

joy

“I’m not really following why people believe the story that she induced the abortion. If he’s happy to rape a 12 year old, it’s hardly going to be beyond him to stick a pencil into her to get rid of the evidence of his crimes.”

That seems so clear as to be obvious.

She may have technically put the pencil into her own self, no one knows and it’s not relevant — but even if she did, it was not without someone else telling her what to do, convincing her it was a good (as in, safe and healthy) thing to do, and standing by to make sure she did it.

For the fact that some people can apparently believe otherwise … IBTP.

Jane Q Public

It seems to me that the only way to avoid slut shaming is to be young enough to still be in Pampers. Once you transition from Pampers to potty, look out! Your ass is now fair game the to the ravenous public appetite for righteous finger pointing. Babies, beware! Your days of idly drooling in your crib and soiling your nappies are numbered! You will emerge from the nursery a wanton little slut in full knowledge of “having sex” and “pregnacy.”

Magdalena

The latest news updates to this story are filled with fetus worshipping language that indicates that the aborted fetus, had it lived, would have been a boy. The personification and glorification of said fetus rate as only slightly less vile than the fact that at least one news article has reported that the fucking douchebag rapist was actually the girl’s “boyfriend.” IBTP.

I’ve just remembered that almost all the anti-choicer fetus-worshipers will concede a woman’s right to abort in the case of incest and rape, but here’s the thing: they also feel they get to decide what is rape and what isn’t, and 99.9999% of the time, the howling mob of woman-haters doesn’t believe a rape occurred. It’s a total set-up.

Martha Maus

If only there was some personal savage death island sanctuary for her to go to. and an -altogether -other sort of savage dealth island for him, if you get my Australian accented, cut him loose with all the Autralian savage death island flora and fauna we do so well drift.

The gympie gympie stinging tree is not deadly but its neurotoxin remains active for years and is said to be so painful it that it drives some victims mad enough to try to cut off the affected limb. I can see where some blamers might be tempted to go with this…
Martha Maus

tinfoil hattie

delphyne

“She may have technically put the pencil into her own self, no one knows and it’s not relevant”

It is relevant. It’s a massive assault on her body. I think the rapist did it, and she might be protecting him in some way. He was there when it happened. He’s the one person we know who is happy to physically assault this child’s body. The evidence points to him not her.

Maybe people don’t want to think how bad it possibly got for this girl.

joy

If this girl did put the pencil into herself, gripped it with her own hand, etc., it was CLEARLY NEVER her own idea. Some asshole told her to do it, and stood watching to make sure she did it. There was no way she thought it up on her own, or would have done it on her own.

He probably said, “If your mom finds out what you did, she’ll kill you.”
“If you have a baby, everyone will know what a slut you are.”
“No one will ever love you if they know.”

It’s almost worse if she held it herself under his “guidance” and “direction.” Because now I’m sure she’s blaming herself, and will for the rest of her already probably-ruined life.

I’m pretty sure I know (not exactly, but close enough in terms of empathy) how shitty it is and is going to be for this child. You know those scripts I wrote above, from the rapist? Other than the one about having a baby (I was too young), that is what my molesting cousin (25 years old to my 5) told me.

There is no way to sugarcoat or gloss over that this little girl had an unfathomably cruel experience and is not going to turn out all right.

That this makes me want to vomit is no surprise. Maybe she’s lucky she’s in Pennsylvania, not Texas. Otherwise, she’d have been charged with prostitution by now. Maybe we should feel grateful or something.

…Nope. Not feeling it.

Ruby Lou

I’m resonating like a tuning fork to this tragic tale of the girl in Pennsylvania being cruelly and irrationally judged as a slut and a criminal because she got used as a secret girlfriend by an adult male perv.

I was molested as a young child by a close relative. I knew without having to be told that if I said anything about it, I would be shamed as a trouble-making liar. Because such a dirty, twisted thing was simply not possible. It hurt like hell to know that I would be considered a perpetrator in my own abuse, and it hurts like hell to see this girl being given the same treatment.

I eventually found my way out of the purgatorial realm of the untold story. I got help, and disclosed the abuse to my family, who reacted with the same accusatory denial as I had suspected they would. But by this time, I had a support system, and friends in the same boat, and with their support, I was able to get past it. I hope and pray this girl from Pennsylvania finds these same priceless gifts.

So kudos and blessings to Joy, Kate, stickypaws, and the blametariat general. Special thanks to you, Twisty, for this whole blog. You are part of the miracle I lived without for too many years. You are using your voices just like you spozed to, to tell and tell and tell. Y’all rule.

Elizabeth

I am so sad, and this article kind of defines why I am sad, without being the reason why I am sad. So sad. I am a feminist and I’ve been raped by so many men, hundreds of times, and I do know good men and have trouble seeing how good they are. The three most important men to me never raped me. I am so sad though because so many other guys have. I was just a kid and they raped me. A lot of them were also kids. My teachers treated me with anger and denial, they said they didn’t believe me, they said I brought this “negative attention” onto myself because I didn’t care whether I got positive attention or negative attention. I’m expected never to name these people; the law is so set up in favor of rapists that if I name them using the internet, I’ll probably go to jail and have to pay money because I exercised my “first amendment right” to warn people that these assholes are rapists. I just don’t have the wherewithall to do that often, because the last time I did that, my friend called me a lying bitch and told me she hated me and blocked me on Facebook, and I deleted my account. I’m a writer who can’t talk about what happened to me, who can’t name the guys who did it, and one can imagine that’s actually worse than the rape for a writer, being victimized and then continuously unable to name who did it. I also blame the patriarchy.

[…] I won’t repeat them here, I don’t want that filth on my blog. Twisty does a good job documenting and dissecting the kind of shit that’s being said; shit like she should be charged with… I don’t […]

[…] I’m not part of the “real world” yet, and that’s what concerns me even more. I have two men in my life, who are unalterably in my life and due to the nature of why they are there will always be there, who talk to me like nothing I say matters because I am a girl. It took me years to pinpoint was I was so HORRIBLY uncomfortable around them, and now that I know why, it just makes me incredibly angry. I excuse it because they are of and old school generation and that’s what they were taught and how they were raised and yadda yadda yadda, but frankly, it pisses me right the hell off. And more and more as I meet more people and see more of the world, I realise just how deeply ingrained some of the attitudes are across the board – not just in these two extreme examples. Not all guys are bad. Not all guys are disrespectful, and many will defend the rights of women just as strongly as they would their own rights. But what utterly breaks my heart is how many of my male friends, who are sweet and lovely and awesome to ME, talk about OTHER girls who are out of earshot in such terms as I simply cannot abide. It makes me sick. Truly. I can’t explain what I mean without sounding all feminist nazi, but the reality is that there are certain things in the way certain males speak and act which, when I notice it, worries me. And the reason it worries me is not because I’m concerned about the little things, but rather what the accumulation of little things leads to in those people who WILL take it to extremes. I read something today which made me sick, and frankly I advise against reading it yourself if you’re of the faint hearted: http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2010/06/09/citizens-of-the-poconos-unite-against-slutty-teen-rap… […]

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